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Again, I have to ask, what sophistication does Excel have that Google spreadsheet does not also offer? COM and VBA scripting? Access database sourcing? Google

Again, I have to ask, what sophistication does Excel have that Google spreadsheet does not also offer? COM and VBA scripting? Access database sourcing? Google spreadsheets even has analogies to this functionality (albeit in Google flavors). It's certainly not the formula and pivot table capabilities which Google spreadsheets has pretty good parity with. At one point in time you could argue that excel handled larger files better, but more recent versions of Google Spreadsheet seem to handle larger files pretty well.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Again, I have to ask, what sophistication does Excel have that Google spreadsheet does not also offer? PowerPivot. Database Access (JDBC to a handful of DBs isn't anywhere close to what Excel offers.)
- debaserab2 9y ago
  All the strong arguments for keeping excel usually boil down to "well, we built this giant thing using proprietary MS scripting/plugins/db access that we're too entrenched in it so it won't work on Google (and should probably be done in an actual programming language anyways)" I don't agree that deep integration is the same as sophisticated features. As a base product without the extras, excel has no advantage over google sheets. You could equally build your stack to the same degree of sophistication on proprietary google tech.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I don't agree that deep integration is the same as sophisticated features. PowerPivot is a sophisticated set of features. > As a base product without the extras, excel has no advantage over google sheets. Sure, if you define all the very real advantages Excel has as “extras”, that's true. It's also not meaningful in the real world where the artificial distinction between “base product” and “extras” has no meaning; the actual product of Excel that businesses get has features for which Google Sheets has no equivalent. > You could equally build your stack to the same degree of sophistication on proprietary google tech. You could, if Google offered equivalent proprietary tech for the purpose, which it doesn't.
    - debaserab2 9y ago
      > Sure, if you define all the very real advantages Excel has as “extras”, that's true. It's also not meaningful in the real world where the artificial distinction between “base product” and “extras” has no meaning; the actual product of Excel that businesses get has features for which Google Sheets has no equivalent. The distinction isn't artificial: you can build upon excel as if it's a programming platform, but that doesn't make excel itself more powerful - all you've done is built yourself into a proprietary tech stack. With enough time you could do the same thing in Google sheets with Google's proprietary scripting interface. Comparing the two apps at baseline there is no difference in sophisticated features. PowerPivot is a plugin. > You could, if Google offered equivalent proprietary tech for the purpose, which it doesn't. Yeah, actually it does - you just won't be solving everything with an xls file and you might actually be using a more appropriate tool for the problem, but I guarantee Google has an equivalent offering.
Flenser 9y ago
Structured References[1]: Tables whose range can be referenced by name where the range expands as you add rows to the table. [1] https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Using-structured-references-with-Excel-tables-f5ed2452-2337-4f71-bed3-c8ae6d2b276e https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Using-structured-re...

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Again, I have to ask, what sophistication does Excel have that Google spreadsheet does not also offer? PowerPivot. Database Access (JDBC to a handful of DBs isn't anywhere close to what Excel offers.)

debaserab2 9y ago
All the strong arguments for keeping excel usually boil down to "well, we built this giant thing using proprietary MS scripting/plugins/db access that we're too entrenched in it so it won't work on Google (and should probably be done in an actual programming language anyways)" I don't agree that deep integration is the same as sophisticated features. As a base product without the extras, excel has no advantage over google sheets. You could equally build your stack to the same degree of sophistication on proprietary google tech.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I don't agree that deep integration is the same as sophisticated features. PowerPivot is a sophisticated set of features. > As a base product without the extras, excel has no advantage over google sheets. Sure, if you define all the very real advantages Excel has as “extras”, that's true. It's also not meaningful in the real world where the artificial distinction between “base product” and “extras” has no meaning; the actual product of Excel that businesses get has features for which Google Sheets has no equivalent. > You could equally build your stack to the same degree of sophistication on proprietary google tech. You could, if Google offered equivalent proprietary tech for the purpose, which it doesn't.
  - debaserab2 9y ago
    > Sure, if you define all the very real advantages Excel has as “extras”, that's true. It's also not meaningful in the real world where the artificial distinction between “base product” and “extras” has no meaning; the actual product of Excel that businesses get has features for which Google Sheets has no equivalent. The distinction isn't artificial: you can build upon excel as if it's a programming platform, but that doesn't make excel itself more powerful - all you've done is built yourself into a proprietary tech stack. With enough time you could do the same thing in Google sheets with Google's proprietary scripting interface. Comparing the two apps at baseline there is no difference in sophisticated features. PowerPivot is a plugin. > You could, if Google offered equivalent proprietary tech for the purpose, which it doesn't. Yeah, actually it does - you just won't be solving everything with an xls file and you might actually be using a more appropriate tool for the problem, but I guarantee Google has an equivalent offering.

Flenser 9y ago

Structured References[1]: Tables whose range can be referenced by name where the range expands as you add rows to the table. [1] https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Using-structured-references-with-Excel-tables-f5ed2452-2337-4f71-bed3-c8ae6d2b276e https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Using-structured-re...